Advancing the REVOLUTION: Using Earth Systems Science to Prepare Elementary School Teachers in an Urban Environment

Journal of Geoscience Education, Sep 2004 by Hall, Frank R, Buxton, Cory A

ABSTRACT

The Earth and Space sciences provide opportunities for content learning in inquiry-based classrooms, emphasizing ways in which science is relevant to the lives of both students and teachers. We are successfully using an Earth Systems approach to prepare preservice elementary school teachers in understanding science content and pedagogy with emphases in technology and mathematics. Using Lake Pontchartrain as the unifying theme across four courses, students learn not only science content, but also scientific process. Students perform research projects on Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River, and develop models of changes in water quality that are directly comparable to longitudinal data being collected by research laboratories, Our approach fosters students': a) understanding of science and the scientific process, b) self-confidence in teaching science, c) knowledge of state science-education standards, d) ability to accurately research and prepare lessons on science topics, and e) positive attitudes towards scientific fields of study. Accomplishing these goals required on-going collaboration between the Colleges of Sciences and Education. Surveying and field-testing results suggest that the pre-service teachers in our classes are likely to apply the approach used in our courses to science teaching in their own classrooms.

BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW

Nationally, science literacy among elementary school teachers is of critical concern. Whereas secondary school science teachers are expected to be science subject specialists in the subjects they teach, elementary teachers are expected to be competent in all science subject areas, and to be able to develop standards-based lessons in inquiry-based classrooms using appropriate technology, at age appropriate levels. Furthermore, the grade-levels to which these teachers are assigned can change annually. Thus, as they transition from a teacher preparation program to being in their own classrooms, elementary teachers must have sufficient knowledge and flexibility to teach a variety of science topics at multiple levels of complexity.

As many children decide if they like or dislike science by middle school (Kahle 1.996; Roth and McGinn, 1998), it is imperative that we work to improve science teaching in the elementary grades. If we truly wish to promote widespread scientific literacy, this emphasis on improving elementary science education is especially important in regions where significant portions of the student body are from groups traditionally under-represented in science. The southeastern United States is a region where population densities are comprised of > 20% racial and ethnic minorities (US Census, 2001), and is also the region with the traditionally lowest performing school districts (NCPPHE, 2002). Ensuring equal opportunity and access to high-quality science education for all students requires us to work diligently to improve the teaching and resources available in these poor performing districts.

There is a substantial body of research literature that focuses on science teacher preparation and attempts that have been made to provide science teachers with the knowledge, skills and dispositions they will need to enact inquiry based approaches in their own classrooms as novice teachers (Gabel, 1994). However, only a small fraction of this literature has focused on the unique needs of teachers who are preparing to teach in low-performing and high poverty urban school settings (Barton, 2001). Teacher preparation and teacher professional development is always a demanding task (Richardson and Placier, 2001), but becomes even more challenging when it involves teaching the culturally and linguistically diverse students who comprise a growing percentage of today's urban classrooms (Garcia, 1999; Lee and Fradd, 1998). At the same time that teacher preparation programs must adapt to these shifting classroom demographics, they must also take into consideration the growing importance that is now being placed upon standards-based instruction and igh-stakes assessments. In other words, meaningful science teacher preparation must be conceptualized and enacted with an eye toward shifting educational policy and accountability contexts (Cohen and Hill, 2000). These pressures now affect all teachers, but are felt most strongly in institutions that prepare teachers for urban schools.

We undertook the current project with the hope that we could help our preservice teachers feel prepared for just such pressures as they exit our program and enter their first teaching positions, many of which will be in challenging urban classrooms. One of the models we relied upon was Barstow and Geary's (2002) "Blueprint for Change," a document intended to improve the development, implementation, and general knowledge of Earth and Space science education as a means of improving science literacy. We embrace this blueprint as a way to provide context to science content through attempts to make science relevant to the lives of students, teachers, and the community at large. Within such a framework, teacher preparation and professional development must no longer bee seen solely as the responsibility of Colleges of Education, but rather, the responsibility of the university more broadly.